Monday, January 14, 2019

Ebola in Pakistan?


I ran across a BBC article talking about an Ebola-like virus which had struck refuge camps in Pakistan, during the attack on Afghanistan in 2001.

That seems odd. How would an African virus find its way to refugee camps for Afghans driven from their homes by US bombs?

Remember in 2014, when we were all going to die from Ebola and the US insisted that the stricken countries accept US troops to fight the virus? I do. I was working in the ER in the middle of flyover country in the USA, but we still had to do drills and practice suiting up for when it hit us. Luckily, the affected countries managed to stop the spread with public health measures. (Who would've guessed that public health measures work better than troops, to stop the spread of disease? Maybe our leaders should take some lessons from Nigerian public health officials).

Stratfor also wrote about the virus, pointing out that "Victims of Crimean-Congo Hemorrhagic Fever (CCHF) first manifest symptoms of the flu. The virus then quickly breaks down human tissue and prevents blood from clotting. As a result, the infected person "bleeds out," as blood pours from orifices while the body quite literally liquefies. "

But not to worry! "It is also unlikely that U.S. Special Forces and troops, which may be involved in possible operations in Afghanistan, are at risk of infection. Most of the troops already in the region have been deployed into Uzbekistan — on the other side of Afghanistan — and even if operations were conducted near at-risk areas, forces would still have to go into the camps themselves to be at danger."

They also casually mention that there were 30 cases in Kosovo earlier in 2001. Say what? How does an African virus manage to get to such remote places? Kosovo, of course, was where the US built a giant military base, Camp Bondsteel, (now a center of drug running of Afghanistan heroin. But, I'm sure that's just a coincidence) after destroying the nation of Yugoslavia in the 90s, culminating with the bombing of Serbia in 1999, only 2 years before the Ebola outbreak.
Odd that this deadly virus seems to turn up whenever targets of the US need to be removed. No doubt it is another coincidence.

No comments: